Course Description

Telecommunications technologies of the internet, including routers and routing, performance analysis, management and security, and wireless LANs. Special topics in current internet issues. Lab component. (Prerequisites: INFSCI 1000 and INFSCI 1004). This course includes laboratory exercises and a final project for which you must spend time outside of class hours in the tele laboratory. This course is a continuously evolving experiment, expect the syllabus to change so that new technologies may be addressed.

• ability to apply statistics to evaluate networks
  
• understanding of how fundamental limits affect real networks
  
• understanding the relationship between protocols and the hardware that implents them
  
• ability to build a network
  

Textbook
Peterson, Larry & Davie, Bruce. Computer Networks: A Systems Approach. Morgan Kauffman

Additional Reference
Stoll, Clifford The Cuckoo's Egg
Comer, Doug, TCP/IP Vol 1, 2, 3

• All work must be the student's own, unless collaboration is specifically and explicitly permitted. Any unauthorized collaboration or copying will at minimum result in no credit for the affected assignment and may be subject to further action under the Guidelines on Academic Integrity of SIS and the University of Pittsburgh. A document discussing these guidelines was included in your orientation materials, and you should acquaint yourself with them.
• Laboratory work will be done in groups, however individual lab reports must be submitted and be the work of each individual student.
• Assignments are due at the beginning of the class (see table). Late assignments may be folded, spindled, multilated or lost by the Instructor or GSAs before, during or after grading, unless specific arrangements are made by the student with the Instructor at least 3 days before the assignment is due. Surviving late assignments will be penalized.
• I reserve the right to reject any assignment that I deem unreadable. This means type up long blocks of text, use a spell checker and grammar checker. Write mathematical analysis neatly. Draw figures using a computer or at least a straight-edge. Everything must be on 8.5"x 11" paper, stapled together. You really don't want to know why this statement is in here do you?
• I reserve the right to modify course requirements administering surprise quizzes for up to 100 points if I feel that students are not pursuing a reasonable amount of course related reading, writing and computing. Should this option be exercised, the point distribution for grades will be changed accordingly.
• You are expected to check this page on a regular basis for any changes to the problems and syllabus. All are subject to change as the course proceeds and will be publicized in the updates section .
• The easiest means of contacting me is by electronic mail first ( jkabara@pitt.edu ). This helps me organize my time, and ensures a more accurate and efficient response outside of office hours. I read my electronic mail throughout the day every day and will usually respond with an answer within a few hours of reading it, and almost always the same day. If the nature of your question requires an interactive session, please come to my office during office hours as scheduled. If, for some unforeseen reason, I cannot make office hours, I will announce that in class whenever possible. I do not make appointments during office hours; I will be available on a first come, first served basis.
  
• You are expected to read the assigned material before the associated lecture
  
• Project
• A group (3 or less students)  course project.
• Build a system to provide DNS service for an experimental network. You may use to OS of your choice, computer boxes will be available for the project. You may select any DNS service package, however each group must design and build a different system.
  
• The project is to be the work of the group. While you may consult with the instructor, the GSA, and others for assistance in specific details,you may not copy someone else's design. This applies to both people currently taking IS-1066 as well as to people who previously took the course or any other source. Such copying will be considered a violation of the SIS Academic Integrity Policies and will be dealt with as such (please refer to theCourse Policies). If you are not sure what the distinction is or have aquestionabout what is appropriate in a specific situation, please contactthe instructor (jkabara@pitt.edu ) before you take a questionable action.
 

• Section 1 (3 hours): Introduction and review of underlying technology. Part 1 reviews optical fiber, coaxial cable, twisted pair and radio communications. Part 2 reviews fundamental limits due to time, distance, noise and power limitations.
• Section 2 (6 hours): Review of multiplexing techniques and media access techniques and their application to Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). Includes addressing, error and flow control. Demonstration of WLAN technology. Exercise #1, throughput vs signal strength in the WLAN environment.
• Section 3 (3 hours): IP, UDP and TCP. In this section we discuss IPaddressing, IP subnets and IP address resolution. We then discuss the connectionlessUDP protocol and the connection-oriented TCP protocol. Demonstration of ARP protocol. Exercise #2, ARP protocol through a router.
• Section 4 (6 hours): Routing in IP networks. We discuss the differencesbetween Link-State and Distance-Vector routing and two common implementations: OSPF and RIP. Demonstration of mapping a network based on routing tables. Exercise #3, configuring a network using OSPF vs. RIP.
• Section 5 (6 hours): Performance analysis. We look at the performanceof Voice over IP (VoIP) on an Ethernet network. We consider the effectsof packet delay, which result in voice delay and jitter. Demonstration of measuring delay. Exercise #4, measure delay and jitter in a VoIP networkand determine if the network will meet the Quality of Service (QoS) standardsof Plain Old TelephoneService (POTS).
• Section 6 (3 hours): Network management. We discuss data network management using the Simple Network Management (SNMP) protocol and the ManagementInformation Base (MIB). Exercise #5, browse a MIB on a router using a SNMP tool.
• Section 7 (6 hours): Server configuration. We will discuss services provided by servers and use a Linux box as an example of how these servicesare implemented. Demonstration of configuring a DNS client and a NFS server. Exercise #6, configure a Linux box to provide print services for a handheld computer.
• Section 8 (6 hours): Network security. We discuss security concepts(authorization, authentication, encryption, detection) and how IP networksprovide these services.  We will discuss passwords, port configurationand firewalls. Demonstration of configuring ports and user accounts ona Linux box. Exercise #7, hacking into a Linux box and configuring a firewall to prevent such activities.